For my husband’s birthday last month, I set out to make a tiramisu cake to share with our two-year-old twin sons. The only problem? Tiramisu, which means “pick me up” in Italian, is typically made with espresso-soaked ladyfingers. Espresso and toddlers don’t exactly mix, so I dialed down the caffeine and, adapting an excellent New … Continue reading Tangy Matcha Tiramisu
Ovenly’s “secretly vegan” chocolate chip cookie recipe, which substitutes water and oil for dairy and eggs, is brilliant and easy to adapt. Last month, I baked a chocolate maple version. Yesterday, I put a salty, crunchy twist on the recipe, swapping out chocolate chips for chocolate covered pretzels, adding toasted pecans, and upping the brown … Continue reading Chocolate Covered Pretzel Cookies
Ovenly, a popular bakery in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, is known for its “secretly vegan” chocolate chip cookie recipe, which is brilliant and nearly impossible to improve upon; take a bite of these crisp-on-the-outside, gooey-in-the-middle treats and you would never guess there’s no butter or eggs. Still, I couldn’t resist making a few changes, … Continue reading Secretly Vegan Chocolate Maple Cookies
This recipe is the invention of one of my two-year-old twin sons, who picked seasonal produce off the kitchen counter – a yellow squash, a Bartlett pear – and asked if we could add them to the banana bread we were baking together. I said sure, why not, and helped him grate the fruits and … Continue reading Fall Harvest Banana Bread
This bread recipe from Coley Cooks is so delicious, and disappears so quickly, I’ve made it four times in one week alone! There’s minimal work required: just mix all the ingredients in one bowl, cover to rise, then shape into a loaf the next morning and bake in a dutch oven. The magic takes place … Continue reading Cinnamon Raisin No-Knead Bread
These crisp, buttery little cookies are a variation on jeera biscuits: cumin-studded shortbread cookies popular in India and Pakistan. In place of jeera -cumin seeds- I used a combination of black and white sesame seeds. The difference between the two? Black seeds contain a nutrient-rich outer hull, and pale seeds generally (though not always) have … Continue reading Black Sesame Shortbread Cookies
Summer is South Asian mango season. Indian grocery stores carry sweet, fragrant varieties like Kesar and Alphonso. And if you’re lucky, you can sample velvety, out-of-this-world Pakistani mangoes. Priced at $10 per mango, at least in some shops in the Chicago area where I live, they are a luxurious treat – practically the equivalent of … Continue reading Mango Lassi with Homemade Almond Milk
These doughnuts are light, airy – and made with pizza dough! Pizza dough has fewer ingredients than classic yeast-raised doughnuts, or even the cake variety, for that matter: no eggs, no milk, no butter. Yet they are just as delicious, if not more, and can be fried in a relatively shallow amount of oil. For … Continue reading Cinnamon Sugar Doughnuts
This is a dairy-free, whole grain, fruit-filled version of my all-time favorite pancake recipe: Rosa Parks’ “featherlite” peanut butter pancakes. The civil rights icon scribbled the recipe on the back of an envelope, which was discovered with her personal belongings after she passed away at age 92, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was … Continue reading Blackberry, Peanut Butter, and Almond Milk Pancakes
The American version of Rugelach, a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish pastry, typically contains butter and cream cheese, and occasionally sour cream. Classic European (and modern Israeli) rugelach are yeast-risen, but the cream cheese dough is much simpler to prepare; all the ingredients are thrown into a food processor. My twist features Greek yogurt in place of … Continue reading Greek Yogurt Rugelach
Baker Without Borders 